I’m Worthless And Weak

I’ve been watching the Twitter story unfold over the last 6-9 months and, to be honest, thought it was all a bit of a laugh. I mean, how on earth can you possibly say anything in 140 characters that you can’t say in a proper blog post? Besides, I was having something of a blogging hiatus anyway so why should I consider it?

I guess the reasons to give it a whirl are because, no matter how much I avoid it, Twitter is here to stay. Well, for the moment, anyway. As someone who likes to try and keep his finger on the pulse of what’s happening on the Internet, it seems crazy that I’ve left it so long. Besides, as part of my long, hard look at online branding, it made sense to secure my name before someone else did.

I have an unusual surname so why should I worry? Well I know of at least two other guys in the UK with the same name as me (yes – I have Googled them both) so I figured it was time to start twittering…or tweeting…or twatting…or whatever it’s called before they did.

I’m off to read up on Twitter etiquette and what have you. In the meanwhile, please feel free to follow me on Twitter and watch me fumble my way around. Who knows? I may even update Twitter more than I do Twenty Steps…

I guess it all depends on what you’re objectives for joining Twitter are.

Personally I’ve joined to see what all the hype is about, keep up to speed with what other folks are up to and to potentially use it at a later date to help with promoting projects I’m involved in.

I guess the key thing is to not just look at Twitter as a marketing tool. If all you do is promote your websites or your products, nobody will follow you. As with websites or blogs, you have to add value and gain trust otherwise you’re going to fail.

I haven’t yet given in to the urge to join twitter but I’m now getting cold sweats wondering whether I’ve made a mistake by not joining. Could anyone give a brief overview of it’s benefits or is it just another social bookmarking site which requires loads of time spending on it with very little return in terms of visitor traffic. I would be interested to hear others views…

Too early for me to give you any constructive advice, Jonathan, and as I’ve said before, I’m not using it to leverage traffic yet but…but…I may try to seed my Tweets with promotional posts at a later date.

I have limited experience with Twitter but, from what I could get out of it when it first came online, I could probably do just as well with other social sites. I guess I should go back and take another look at it because everyone seems to think it’s the rage. I’m not sure why, but I guess you need to try it out honestly before you make any commitments, eh?

@ Jonathan – I’ll definitely be doing a follow up post at some point in the future once I’ve had a chance to play around with Twitter a bit more. Don’t forget to subscribe to the site and get the news hot off the press

@ Masajes Reynaldo – Ermm thanks. I think 😉

@ Clyde – As I’ve said earlier, it al depends on what you’re looking to get out of it. If it’s purely to push links, try to gain traffic, make aff sales, etc then I can see it has limited appeal. If you’re using to build a brand and you seed your posts with marketing posts then it might work for you. As I said to Jonathan, I’ll report back in a couple of months once I’ve given it a fair go.

Try not to get addicted, I’m an recovering twitter addict and all I can say is that the more followers you’ve got, the more you’re twiting. And soon it comes the time when you’re twits are completely pointless and you just send them because you feel the need to send not because you actualy have anything to say. Be careful Mike!

m not a twitter fan either. but people seems be to be crazy about it. thats why i hav joined several months back to see what people actually do there. but i dont use it that much except updating it with my blog posts.

Hi Mike, as others have said I too am not seeing the point of Twitter so now that more than 2 months have passed since you joined what is your verdict? Are you getting value for money or is it “just for fun”?

It’s a bit of both, to be honest. I’ve potentially picked up some voice over work from someone who found me on Twitter and I’ve made a couple of dollars (literally a couple) as a result of dropping an affiliate link into a tweet. However the real value has come from connecting with people I might never have met online otherwise.

Initially I added loads of folks from the SEO, SMO and blogging space because I was already familiar with them via their blogs but lately I’ve been adding people related to my film/acting work. This has opened up potential opportunities. These people don’t always maintain blogs so I would not have found them without Twitter. They’ll often link out to information that, again, I might have missed without Twitter.

Finally I have hardly looked at my RSS feeds since using Twitter on a regular basis. Most of the key stuff I need/want to know I get via Twitter.

If your into Web Marketing then Twitter is for you, it’s all full of spammers and keyword analyzers. They will follow you if they know your into there market. But anyways, i am not a huge twitter fan, Facebook is even better, still has the same concept, live feeds but with tons of applications.